Trump news today: Ex-president files $500m fit versus Michael Cohen while Republicans look for to defund Bragg

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan will host a “field hearing”, likely to be attended by the committee’s Republican members, in New York next week as he continues his efforts to try and politically punish District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

Mr Jordan plans to highlight victims of crime in New York City as he tries to argue that the Manhattan DA is ignoring his responsibilities to prosecute street crime as his office pursues charges against Mr Trump. Mr Bragg has fiercely denied this, and decried Mr Jordan’s efforts as blatant political intimidation.

The Senate’s lone Black Republican member is entering the 2024 race.

Sen Tim Scott on Wednesday announced the launch of an exploratory political campaign for the Republican nomination; in doing so, he also previewed what is likely to be the defining weakness of his campaign. His announcement interview carried no mention of Donald Trump and reflected little of the actual realities of today’s modern-day GOP.

An individual shareholder of Fox Corporation is suing Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan Murdoch, as well as other members of the company’s board alleging they breached their fiduciary duty to the company.

In a lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court on 11 April, investor Robert Schwarz brought forth a derivative suit claiming that board members chose to promote “false stolen election claims” which negatively impacted the company’s reputation and led to two defamation cases.

This news comes as more and more Fox employees are fretting in comments to journalists about the future of their company thanks to the massive $1.6bn lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems that threatens the company’s finances in an unprecedented way.

The origins of Donald Trump’s current legal woes date all the way back to his first bid for the presidency, when he faced Hillary Clinton as a mostly-untested political newcomer and was (at the time) facing a barrage of criticism over revolting sexist remarks made on a leaked Access Hollywood tape.

With the US now facing the historic prospect of a former president being prosecuted as a criminal in open court, let’s go back to the beginning, and look at the major milestones of the Stormy Daniels saga and how it led to this moment:

An attorney for Donald Trump is seeking a one-month delay in the trial regarding a columnist’s claims that Mr Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s, contending that his client’s right to a fair trial depends on a “cooling off” period following the former president’s indictment and arraignment.

The trial was set for April 25. In a letter Tuesday to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, attorney Joseph Tacopina cited “the recent deluge of prejudicial media coverage” surrounding Trump’s arrest and court appearance in arguing for a delay. The former president was charged March 30 with 34 felony counts related to allegations that he paid hush money to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels.

The civil case before Judge Kaplan was brought against Mr Trump in November by E. Jean Carroll, a columnist who says the wealthy real estate developer raped her in early 1996 after a chance meeting at the Bergdorf Goodman department store.

Mr Trump has repeatedly and emphatically denied the allegation. A jury will be asked to decide whether the rape occurred and if Trump defamed Carroll with his comments.

A temporary state law that took effect last year allows adult rape victims to sue their abusers, even if attacks happened decades ago.

Mr Tacopina’s letter seeking a delay in the trial for Carroll’s civil suit followed Kaplan’s order on Monday directing parties in the case to notify him by April 20 whether they will be present throughout the trial in Manhattan federal court. Carroll’s attorney has said she will attend; Trump’s attorney has not responded to requests for comment on Kaplan’s order.

The probe is part of the federal investigation into Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents following his presidency.

Investigators have questioned several witnesses about the map, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to The New York Times. The nature of the map’s contents are unknown.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is fighting back at what he says is an explicit attempt by House Republicans to interfere in his office’s prosecution of Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Mr Bragg sued the House Judiciary Committee chair, Jim Jordan, and accused him of undertaking “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg, making demands for confidential documents and testimony from the District Attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials” in federal court.

Republicans, predictably, howled in outrage at the DA’s response to their attempts to attack the credibility of his office.

Things took a turn for the worse for Fox News’s legal team this week as Dominion Voting Systems’s $1.6bn lawsuit against the channel proceeds.

A judge reprimanded Fox’s lawyers and said that he was no longer confident that attorneys for the company were being “straightforward” with the court.

Find out more in The Independent:

Donald Trump returned to New York on Thursday for the first time since his arrest and arraignment last week to face his latest legal battle.

He was scheduled to sit for a deposition on Thursday before Attorney General Letitia James, who has brought a $250m business fraud lawsuit against him and the Trump Organization over alleged wrongdoing, including misleading banks and others that inflated the value of golf courses and hotels that bear his name.

This comes one week after he was arraigned in a Manhattan court on a 34-count indictment in the hush money case.

An Arizona congressman and fierce Trump ally has announced a expense aimed at stripping Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s workplace of any federal financing in vengeance for the prosecution of Donald Trump by Mr Bragg. It deals with a high roadway to passage in House, which is managed by a thin GOP bulk. It will not pass the Senate, which is managed by Democrats.

“District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran on a campaign pledge to indict President Trump. Bragg took the unprecedented action of converting alleged minor business misdemeanors to 34 individual felonies in an attempt to put President Trump behind bars and humiliate him and his supporters,” he informed The Daily Caller.